Veneer
by HuaFeiHua
Summary: For Momo, it starts when she is five and a great red splotch forms over her left eye. For Shoto, it starts when he is eight and finds out that soulmates share skin markings. So when they meet in high school, where does it go?


**Word Count:** 6,645

* * *

Yaoyorozu Momo stared down at her times table worksheet with such full absorption and intensity, all the rest of the world may as well have not even needed to exist.

"…Then you carry the two… Yes, just like that."

Momo ever so carefully engraved a two onto her paper as neatly as she could, her clumsy, childish hands requiring far more force to keep refined than either her tutor or the table would have liked, but as it was, neither tutor nor table mattered at the moment. All that mattered to her was what exactly it was that forty-three and eighteen multiplied into, so much so that she didn't notice it when the tutor trailed off. That is, until she glanced up to ask if she'd gotten the answer right and found the teenager staring at her with jaw dropped and eyes blown wide in utter shock and horror.

Momo frowned. "What are you looking at?" she asked.

Her tutor blinked twice, picked her jaw up off the floor, and shook her head violently as if trying to clear away the daze like that. "Sorry, kiddo, I was just—" she abruptly stopped again and leaned over Momo's paper. Frowning, she took the pencil from the little girl's hand and scratched out a line of work. "You need a zero in the one's place when you're multiplying the tens out, remember? Try it again. I'll be right back."

Momo huffed, frustrated with herself for forgetting, and redid her adding. "Shokan-sensei?" she called, staring intently at her new answer. "Is it 774? The answer is 774, right?" Only when she was met without reply did Momo look up again and find her tutor gone.

She crossed her arms and glared at the bruises on them, all in various degrees of freshness. They had been showing up a lot as of late, and despite being a mere five years old, she'd already begun to notice the strange looks people gave her in public because of them. However, Momo saw Shokan-sensei twice a week, making her the third-most often seen person in the former's life, right behind her mother and the maid. This, by all standards, should have made Shokan-sensei used to the markings that bloomed on Momo's arms, neck, and shoulders. How very strange.

Then again, the bruising had only gotten _really_ bad in the last week. Perhaps the amount forming had become concerning to Shokan-sensei and she went to express it to Mrs. Yaoyorozu. Momo didn't really get what the big deal was. After all, the bruises weren't actually painful; they just showed up.

Her tutor arrived again with her mother in tow.

"Momo, look at me," Mrs. Yaoyorozu commanded, and Momo complied. Her mother studied her for a full half minute, her brow furrowed with a mix of concentration, concern, and curiosity. Then, as soon as the thirty seconds were over, she faced Shokan-sensei, and they discussed her markings in low voices.

"…You're right. This one _does_ look bad."

"It's right over her eye, too. How are you going to hide something like that inconspicuously?"

"I don't know."

Momo put a hand over her eye in curiosity. Was there a bruise over her eye now too? That was certainly new. She hazarded a glance at the grown-ups just to make sure they weren't paying any attention to her and slipped away.

Directly outside the hall there was a full-length mirror, and it was in this mirror that Momo first saw the great, red splotch over her left eye.

She approached her reflection with a distinct sense of morbid curiosity. What could have possibly made a mark so burning and angry upon her face? Was it the same thing that left her limbs black and blue? Come to think of it, how come she sometimes got random bruises in the first place? How come only the ones she made herself hurt? Momo put her hand to the mark on her eye, the source of all the unanswered questions her young mind was now teeming with.

"Momo," her mother called gently from inside the study hall. "Come back inside. Mother's going to be teaching you for now, okay?"

Momo's hand fell back down to her side, and she blinked at her reflection a few times before scampering back inside the room.

"B'bye, kiddo," Shokan-sensei said when she passed the little girl on her way out.

"Wait," Momo said, suddenly remembering what she had been doing prior to the whole eye mark thing. The tutor stopped. "Forty-three times eighteen is equal to 774, right?"

Shokan-sensei blinked a few times as she tried to process the question. Clearly, her chat with Mrs. Yaoyorozu had put bigger things on her mind, but then again, children are not very observant of things they don't otherwise think about. "Y-yeah. That's right, kiddo."

Momo beamed at her accomplishment. "Bye-bye, sensei!" she chirped, unaware of the way her tutor's voice had trembled, and left to listen to her mother.

* * *

Shoto's older sister Fuyumi had been acting strange as of late, doodling all over her arms, writing odd messages and mundane reminders on her hands, and all the while remaining very secretive about what all of it meant. To some degree, Shoto wondered if that was just what happened to girls when they turned twelve. _But_ , he _also_ had vague memories of her doing this a couple years ago too, just not as much.

"Why are you doing that?" he asked her point-blank one day, as you do when you know effectively nothing about neither the world nor twelve-year-old older sisters.

Fuyumi glanced up and raised an eyebrow at her brother. "You mean drawing on my arm?"

"Yeah," he replied, reaching out and pulling her arm to him for closer observation.

"It's so that my soulmate can see them, of course!" Fuyumi declared, pushing her glasses up her nose to emphasize the gleam in her eye that read, ' _I have superior knowledge.'_

"Your soulmate?" Shoto dubiously asked, letting go of his sister so as to cross his arms at her.

"Yes! My soulmate!"

"What's that?"

The smug look on Fuyumi's face immediately fell away in favor of weirded-out confusion. "You're eight years old and you don't know this kind of stuff?" she asked, crouching down to her brother's eye level. "Didn't Mom tell you about it?"

"No."

Fuyumi blinked in realization. "Oh yeah, huh." She sat down, crossed her arms, and furrowed her brow. "Dad's not around, right?" she whispered, her eyes shiftily scanning the room as if said dad might be watching them from behind a plant.

Shoto shook his head. "He was called away for some kind of hero emergency in that other city a while ago, so Grandma's watching us today."

Grinning, Fuyumi said, "Good. That means we're all free today. C'mere so I can tell you about soulmates."

Shoto squatted down and crept forward, and suddenly, his elder sister's eyes acquired a most dangerous gleam.

"You see, Sho-chan, your soulmate is a person that you're going to fall in love with someday," she said in the most grown-up voice Shoto had ever heard her have. "That's what Mom told me before she left. She said you're connected to your soulmate by bonds in your very hearts and souls, so whatever markings you have on _your_ skin are gonna show up on your soulmate's too."

It took no less than five seconds for Shoto to feel sick with guilt at the thought. Of all the things people could have shared with their soulmates, it _had_ to be the one that he liked to think about the _least_.

Fuyumi noticed his unease and frowned slightly. "Well, think of it this way, Sho-chan. At least you'll never have to wonder if your soulmate's in the room 'cause you'll just have to look for the scar. Saves everyone an awful lot of trouble."

Yes, well, _convenience_ wasn't high on the list of things that could reassure Shoto at the moment, whose guilt renewed every time he looked into the mirror and saw the red, angry mark shining back at him. The idea that there was someone out there living not only with every cut, scrape, and bruise he had ever received from his father, but also the scar he'd gotten from his mother? For three _whole_ years now! The heavy weight of guilt intensified in him, choking him with fear and negativity.

A gentle pat on the head drew him out of his panic. Shoto looked at his sister again, and she smiled at him despite the tears forming in his eyes.

"Don't worry about it," she said comfortingly, pulling him into a soft hug and stroking his hair. "I'm sure that whoever they are, they don't hold it against you. 'Sides, it looks pretty cool. Maybe they like it."

Still, he couldn't be stopped from grabbing a brush and writing " _I'm sorry."_ on his arm as carefully as his unrefined hands would allow the second the opportunity arose. He washed it away a few scant minutes later, feeling bad at the thought of marking his soulmate's skin even more.

* * *

Age ten was usually the start of the _boy-crazy_ phase for many girls, and as such, it was at this time that they first truly took advantage of the soulmate bond.

Momo was no exception, often creating pens and doodling little hearts and flowers on her arms whilst dreaming of the day she'd be able to meet her soulmate in the flesh. Most girls usually stole glances at the object of their affections to see if the same markings showed up on them as well, but Momo did not. Firstly because she didn't have a crush, but that was kind of because of her second reason: she _knew_ she didn't know her soulmate, not yet anyway. Though the mark over her eye had faded as her soulmate's had likely scarred, she never forgot the sight of it in the mirror, and she had yet to find anyone with the same scarred eye.

So she simply doodled, half-lost in her own fantasies of the person who would be seeing them. Momo had long since concluded that her soulmate was either _very_ accident prone, or that they had someone hurting them. Whichever one it was, all she hoped for was that her little drawings brought them a small amount of joy into their life.

Almost every single day, she watched the markings wash themselves away within the hour, but unlike some of her classmates, she was never explicitly told to stop. For that, she was glad.

One day, when the hearts and flowers and stars stayed long enough for her to make it home with them, Momo found more bruises than usual blooming on her belly. Her guts twisting, she shakily drew a lone flower on her forearm after all the others were cleaned up.

The instant she finished, the ink washed away before her eyes again, reinforcing her fear that she had accidentally caused her soulmate harm. Soon, her doodles were replaced by two words written in handwriting as shaky as her drawing had been:

 _I'm sorry._

It erased itself a few short seconds later.

Momo didn't understand why _they_ were the one apologizing. After all, it had been _her_ drawings that had led to all this; it was _her_ duty to say she was sorry. For a long time, she sat on her bed, staring at her blank arms with a pen in hand, filled with the desire to respond but altogether unsure of what to say.

At last, one of her two conclusions clicked in her mind. If her soulmate was merely accident prone, then they wouldn't necessarily become extra hurt for leaving her drawings on longer than usual, nor would they necessarily apologize for doing so since it wasn't the norm. After all, hygiene was important, and she'd heard that leaving ink on skin led to diseases, so cleaning up the doodles had to be done at some point or another.

Momo hunched over her arm, her hand trembling at the revelation, but with new resolve in her heart, she wrote her reply.

Shoto was woken by loud, not-very-well-suppressed snickers, courtesy of his twin older brothers. Drowsily, he opened his eyes to see the two of them peering at him with uncomfortable intensity and closeness.

His brothers were obnoxious. There was no way around that fact, no alternate wording to describe them. They teased him whenever they could, played weird pranks on everyone but their father, and their grandmother often cited the two of them as the reason why she wasn't going to live to be a hundred.

"Hey, hey, Sho-chan, you've got a little something on your forehead," Ryousuke said, hovering a black permanent marker mere centimeters away from Shoto's eyes. "Let me cover it up for you."

Shoto sat up, and, still too groggy to realize what was happening, allowed a grand total of three strokes to be made before he batted away his brother's hand, only to hear more cackling coming from next to him. The other brother was finishing what the redhead had started. "Yukiiii," he whined, as twelve-year-olds are apt to do. "Stop that."

"No can do, kiddo," Ryousuke said with a grin. "Believe me, it'll look weirder unfinished."

Shoto scowled and swatted at Yuki's hand. Both twins pulled back, the identical frowns upon their faces as deceptive as they themselves were.

"Aww, but Sho-chaaaan, we were just having a little fun with you," Yukine said, crossing his arms and twirling his marker between his fingers with an exaggerated pout.

"You were drawing on my forehead. In _permanent_ marker."

"Actually, we replaced the ink so that it's skin-safe and washable," Yukine said in a matter-of-fact manner. "The marker shell was just part of the prank."

"And it's _art!_ " Ryousuke argued with a dramatic flourish. "You can't be mad at us for providing you with free _art!_ Artists can't always afford to be giving out art for free to people just because they know each other. You should be thanking us. Art is a luxury, you know, baby bro."

Deadpan looks were also an art, one that Shoto had mastered despite his young age. "I know what you _really_ do during your club hours at school, Ryousuke," he said, but the redheaded twin merely shrugged.

"Yeah, but does Dad care? _Would_ he care if he found out?" Ryousuke pointed out with a grin. "Face it, Sho-chan, we mean _nothing_ to him. I could probably become a villain, and the only people who would really care about it would be you and Mimi."

"Hey!" Yukine put a hand over his heart and gave his twin a look of utter betrayal, but Ryousuke only rolled his eyes.

"Please, Yuki, we all know that if _I_ joined the dark side, you'd have _long_ ceased to exist."

"Yeah, 'cause Grandma says _I'm_ two hundred percent of your impulse control."

"I, for one, _still_ think that making jello in the toilet bowls would have been a _brilliant_ idea if you just _agreed_ to keep the room cold enough…"

Shoto tuned the twins out, his thoughts returning to the graffiti on his forehead. He kept no mirrors in his room, but that only worried him further. Was his soulmate awake yet? Would they see the drawing before he was able to wash it away?

His room door slid open with a bang. "Ryousuke! Yukine! I can hear you bickering from all the way over in _my_ room! What in the _world_ are you doing to poor Shoto now?"

Yuki threw the marker over his shoulder as all three boys turned to face the door. "Good morning, Mimi!" the twins chirped as the eldest Todoroki sibling stormed in.

"Don't you ' _good morning'_ me. It's half past five. The world doesn't even _exist_ at this hour," Fuyumi snapped, angry steam billowing from her ears, only to stop in her tracks and stare at Shoto. "Please don't tell me you drew that dick on his face."

"How could we have? We don't have a marker," Ryousuke coyly replied, gesturing to his and Yuki's empty hands.

Their sister's glare hardened, and if her looks could kill, the twins would be dead. "I saw you throw that permanent marker over your shoulder when I walked into the room, Yukine."

"Actually, we replaced the ink so that it's skin-safe and washable," Ryousuke argued. "The marker shell is just part of the prank."

"I don't care what you did to the marker, _you drew a dick on his forehead_!"

"I'd like to call it 'rare interpretive art'," Yukine piped up, which made him the sole focus of their sister's fury for the moment.

"It's a dick," she said, blatantly and bluntly.

Shoto sighed as _all_ of his siblings began bickering, resigning himself to the fact that they had blockaded the door so that he could actually get out and _solve_ the issue of having genitals drawn on his face. However, as quickly as the quarrelling began, it ended just as abruptly, and all three teenagers stared at their little brother.

Shoto gave them a quizzical look. "What?" he asked, but he never received a straight answer. Instead, Ryousuke and Yukine exchanged identical cat faces as Fuyumi took a step back and observed. " _What?_ "

Ryousuke flicked Shoto right where he and Yukine had drawn the dick. "It's vanishing," he said.

" _What?_ " Shoto repeated for the third time. Panic rose in his throat, heat rose in his cheeks, and his hands rose to his forehead as a weight in his gut sank low, low, low at his fears confirmed. His soulmate had most _definitely_ seen his brothers' drawing.

"Heeeey, Sho-chan," Ryousuke said as he and Yukine leaned in to take up his entire field of vision. "Guess who's—"

"Shut up, Ryousuke," Shoto growled before his brother could even finished. He rubbed at the spot his brothers had drawn on angrily, vainly hoping to have done _something_ about the vandalism. "I don't want to talk right now so could you please—"

Yukine put a cold hand on Shoto's left side, extinguishing a flame that had popped up in his anger. "Calm down, kiddo. They're probably used to stuff on their face by now, y'know."

Before any of the Todoroki kids knew it, the temperature in the room dropped by at least twenty degrees Celsius, and fresh frost now sparkled on the window, the floor, and the twins. Luckily for the latter, Shoto wasn't the only child who could heat the air, and Ryousuke freed himself and Yukine soon enough.

"Sorry, kid," he said, the usual teasing charm in his voice gone in favor of sincerity. Shoto huffed, but this was ignored. "Let's go, Yuki."

Yukine briefly poked his tongue out at his youngest brother before he left the room with his twin. Now only Fuyumi remained.

When Shoto merely sulked, his sister sat down at the other end of his futon, sighing with resignation as she fiddled with the blanket. The minutes crept by, and soon, the clock struck six a.m.

"Do you want to go out for cold soba when I'm finished with my club activities today?" Fuyumi offered at last.

For a little while longer, Shoto stared at the perfectly formed _It's okay_ on his palm. (He hadn't even apologized first this time.) Then, he rubbed it away and faced his sister. "Yeah. Sure."

* * *

Momo knew from the moment she first walked into Class 1-A that her soulmate was in there with her. Not that it was an especially profound or enlightening moment; it just would have been weirder if she _hadn't_ known at first sight.

She'd seen him before at the recommendation trials, but he seemed to be a recluse by nature, avoiding idle chatter with the other potential students when they had been given breaks. It was only now, upon both of their admissions to U.A., that she was able to see with clarity his both face and the scar they shared for those few weeks as children.

When she sat down in her assigned seat (she was seated next to him, something she wasn't too sure how to feel about), he didn't even bat an eye. Hell, he didn't even seem to notice or care about anyone in the room, acting just as cold and aloof as the day they had tested in, and this both intrigued and confused Momo. She peered at him curiously while their new classmates trickled in and mingled amongst themselves.

After a few minutes, the boy turned to her in irritation, his steely eyes boring into her very being. "Are you looking for something?" he asked, sounding quite bored.

Momo flinched away from his gaze. "Sorry. Y-your scar, I—"

Before she could even finish her sentence, the boy's expression clouded and he turned away. "Pity the person on the other side," he said gruffly.

In that exact moment, it occurred to Momo how truly strange it was that she had gone all her life assuming that both parties of a soul bonded pair would know they were meant to be from the moment they met. Perhaps it was because she had lived all her life knowing she'd know at first glance, but only now did she realize that he didn't have that same luxury. And, with his flawed understanding of the soulmate bond, he _couldn't_ know, not on his own.

But she could tell him. Whatever subtle hints she could try and drop him would sooner fly over his head than make him realize anything.

A smile graced Momo's lips. It was early yet. She could explain everything to him now make sure there were no secrets kept in their relationship from the start, and get the reveal thing out of the way. She almost did, but their teacher, a scraggly, sleep-deprived, thirty-something-year-old man entered the room and hushed them all with a glare. Momo's heart fell at the opportunity lost.

She stole one more glance at her seatmate as his name was called. Todoroki Shoto was his name, and now that she had the time again to observe him, she couldn't help but to be secretly pleased at her lot in life. He was a very pretty boy.

The thought barely escaped her consciousness before it made her face flush. _So it begins already,_ she thought as she ducked behind her heap of new textbooks. _So it begins already._

Well, this would make _telling_ him just a _little_ bit harder.

* * *

Shoto would be lying if he said he didn't sometimes miss all the stars and flowers that would blossom up and down his arms when he was younger. But as he (vainly) tried to study for his rapidly approaching final exams, he wondered how his soulmate could find the time now, after almost five years of near radio silence, to bring back the old habit. Did they never study? Or perhaps they didn't go to a school where exams were treated with the same weight as U.A. What if they hadn't even gotten into a high school? It dismayed him to think about having a soulmate who didn't take their studies seriously.

He leaned back in his chair and raised his arm up to the fading light to simply observe the little pen strokes as they danced across his skin to form the pretty, little pictures. Perhaps they were simply confident enough in their academic skills that they didn't bother with studying. If so, he envied them. At least then he wouldn't have to think about how he was using their doodles as an excuse to procrastinate.

Oddly enough, Shoto found his thoughts drifting towards Yaoyorozu. His first impression of her had been that she knew what she was doing and what was going on at all times, but as of late, she seemed to be… shying away from that image, from _everything_. She used to give him long, weird looks up until the sports festival happened, but she hardly dared even breathe in his direction since then. It was strange.

Eventually, his soulmate scrubbed away all the little hearts and stars and whatnot, replacing them with their familiar handwriting in the equally familiar phrase, _It's okay_.

Shoto frowned as the words erased themselves. He felt as if he'd seen that handwriting somewhere else as of late.

Maybe they designed a font he'd seen around.

He sat up properly and resumed studying.

Between moving into the dorms at U.A. and finding time to study, Momo had little spare time to even _think_ about anything aside from maintaining her academics. But once the dust had settled and all of 1-A was living together as one (mostly) happy family with 1-B, the fact that she and Todoroki were soulmates came back to Momo with startling suddenness.

The only problem was that she _still_ had no idea how to tell him, and even though she felt comfortable talking to him, it would be more than a little awkward to just _say_ it. _Oh, hey, Todoroki-san, I know we've known each other for a couple months now, but I just now think you should know that we're soulmates. Yeah, it was your scar that tipped me off; kinda hard to miss it._

Ochako hummed in thought once Momo finished venting. It was Friday evening, so the common room was just crowded enough to make their conversation easily lost in the general background murmurs to anyone who might want to eavesdrop. "I wouldn't say it's necessarily _awkward_ , per se," Ochako said. "I'm sure similar things have happened in the past, and things are only as awkward as you make them out to be. You just have to find the right way to let him know subtly."

Momo sank into the couch and stared at the ceiling. "I don't know if you've noticed, Ochako, but I can be a _pretty_ awkward person sometimes. Plus, subtlety isn't really something he has going for him." She sighed and habitually pulled a pen from her palm. She twiddled it between her fingers a few times before uncapping and recapping it absently.

And then, it clicked. "Hey, Ochako, remember all those doodle games girls would always play in elementary school on their arms and stuff?" she asked as she sat up properly and pulled another pen from her arm, this time with more purpose.

A grin spread across Ochako's face as she caught on. "Yeah, I _do_ remember those doodle games, Yaomomo," she replied as she took the second pen. She uncapped it with glee, but she paused just before using it. "Have you ever considered just leaving your name and location somewhere where he'd be bound to see it and just let him come to you?"

Momo shrugged, already carefully drawing on her arm. "Oh, you know. Rich, traditional parents who didn't allow me to do much outside of studying. I doubt he would have gotten past security anyway. Besides, where's the fun in just giving out the information like it's nothing?"

"Mmm… I guess that makes sense, but didn't you say he's in our class? Why didn't you tell him earlier in the school year?"

Momo winced and paused for a moment. "Too shy," she admitted, spending a moment watching her work wash away on its own.

"Fair," Ochako said with agreeing tilt of her head, and began to draw on one of Momo's legs.

"'Sup, girls." The couch sank as Kyouka leaned on it, and Momo yelped in surprise. "What's going on?"

"We're having a soulmate reveal," Ochako chirped as her doodles also smeared into nothing before they were even finished.

"Oh? Who is it, Yaomomo?" Kyouka said with a smirk, and Momo felt heat rise up in her cheeks.

"Oh, just, you know," she said as nonchalantly as she could while still avoiding eye contact. She recapped and uncapped her pen repeatedly and gulped, for she had never actually said aloud who her soulmate was. "Todoroki-san."

Kyouka's smirk evolved into a smug grin, and Ochako let out a little gasp of excitement. Kyouka tumbled over the back of the couch onto the cushions themselves and faced her best friend. "Really now?" she mused, plucking the pen right from Momo's hand with her jacks. "Well then, this should be fun."

"I'm concerned now," Momo said, a third pen appearing out of its own accord. She caught it and twisted the cap a couple times. "Should I be? Tell me what you're planning."

"Oh, just, you know," Kyouka airily said as she made herself comfortable. "Just to write things. Can I call him Tokidoki-kun?"

"Please do not."

"Fine, fine," Kyouka sighed. "But then I insist on calling him Icy-Hot or whatever it is Bakugou likes to call him."

"I mean, it's not like anything's actually sticking around," Ochako noted. "He must be in the shower right now."

"That's an _awfully_ weird thought, Ochako," Kyouka commented, raising an eyebrow at the other girl. "But that just means it doesn't matter what we put down for now, right?"

"I suppose," Momo agreed, albeit sounding more than a little bit reluctant. "Sure. Write whatever you'd like."

"Yes!" Kyouka cheered to herself.

"Don't make me regret this," Momo warned as she uncapped her new pen at last and resumed her doodling.

Kyouka shook her head and grinned. " _Dear Icy-Hot. Or maybe just hot,_ " she narrated, just barely holding in her laughter. Ochako stifled giggles of her own, tickling Momo when her pen strokes became fairy-light. " _Today is going to be the day when we go out and_ —"

"I have a new regret and it's being friends with you, Kyo," Momo said, biting her tongue so that the laughter bubbling up in her throat wouldn't betray her true thoughts. "I thought I said not to do that."

"— _for the rest of our liiiives_." Kyouka looked up with a mischievous grin upon her face. "Oh, c'mon. It's not like he'll be able to read it when he's in the shower or anything."

"Actually, I'm not so sure about that anymore," Ochako said. "My flowers aren't smudging anymore."

Momo instinctively pulled her legs away from her friends and tucked them under her. "Kyouka, oh my god, _please_ don't leave any more suggestive messages on my shins," she begged. "If he's out then that means he might notice and read them at any minute!"

"Aww, I _guess_ ," Kyouka said, scratching out her last sentence when Momo delicately let her legs out again. "I guess drawing sparkles is fun too."

Momo sighed, but relieved as she was that Kyo would cease her dirty jokes, fear continued to mount in her gut at the thought of her confession being so near. So much so that her hand began to tremble as she tried to draw.

Fortunately, Ochako noticed and hugged Momo's leg. "Don't worry, Yaomomo. We got you. This'll go _great._ "

Yet both girls still froze when they heard the soft plodding of bare feet approaching and the dialogue that accompanied it, leaving only Kyouka to her mischief.

"It's strange, Midoriya. This kind of thing hasn't happened at this scale since I was a kid. What could possibly be possessing them _now_ to be…" Todoroki stopped dead.

Kyouka and Ochako looked up. Momo, in the meantime, was incapable, and the quiet background chatter of the commons faded away in her mind, replaced with the rhythmic _lub-dub_ of her heartbeat as she very slowly processed the fact that not only was her soulmate standing in front of her, but so was his friend Midoriya. And he had noticed how long it had been since she last had help drawing on herself. _And_ both boys were most likely staring at the three girls with pens crammed onto one couch.

(Could they see her? Momo hoped not, wishing her friends blocked the boys' view of her instead.)

"Uhhh…" Momo said, unsure of how forming words went anymore. Screw the idea of only her face growing warm; from the neck up, she felt like she was on _fire_.

"Surprise~!" Ochako cheered, and everyone's attention shifted to her.

Kyouka threw her pen at the gravity girl. "Oh, come on! They were about to have a moment!"

Momo finally found it within herself to look up. However, the moment she did so, her eyes met with Todoroki's, and the sounds of the real life faded away once more in favor of the whooshing of blood in her ears. Words began to fall from her mouth, but all of them were half-baked and incoherent, for that was all on her mind at the moment.

"Yaoyorozu," Todoroki said, the only thing able to cut through her nervous haze.

She flinched and broke their gaze at the sound of her name. "Uhh… yeah?" she said, her voice barely more than a breath. She doubted he was even able to hear her, but before she could repeat herself more loudly, Todoroki walked up to Momo and hefted her bridal style into his arms with minimal effort, causing the girl to squeak in surprise.

"We need to talk about this," he declared to his audience of three (four including Momo herself). "Just the two of us. In my room. Don't follow us."

Momo's face grew hotter than the blazing sun itself, and something popped into existence out of its own accord as she tried to hide her blush. Todoroki carried her out of the common room and into the elevators without even waiting for a response from their friends.

This wasn't _anything_ like how she had imagined the confession would go.

* * *

He laid her down gently by his futon, then sat cross-legged in front of her as the dying rays of day played on the ground. His impulse had been fulfilled, but at the price of not knowing what to do next.

Fortunately for him, something in his heart was way ahead of whatever addled mess his brain was at the moment, and words began to tumble from him without him even knowing what they would be.

"I'm sorry."

Yaoyorozu blinked once, twice, three times, and glanced around the room to fully settle in. When at last her gaze settled upon him, she looked confused. "What for?" she asked.

Shoto reached out and gently brushed the spot on her face where his scar would have been only to find nothing but soft skin and a surprised look. "The scar," he said, pulling away. He lowered his gaze to stare at their arms and legs, both covered with identical drawings. Why would they share markings that had been drawn on mere minutes ago, but not a decade-old scar? "I just… I thought…" _I thought you'd have it too._

Yaoyorozu gave him a soft, gentle smile, pulled his hand onto her lap, and entwined her fingers with his. "It's okay. I understand."

"You already knew, didn't you." It was not a question, but wasn't as hurt as it might seem on paper.

"From the moment I walked through the classroom door and saw you."

"Was it the scar?"

"Yes." It was nice the way she said it, while rubbing soft circles on his palm with her thumb.

"So then why don't you have one too?" Shoto looked up again, having just realized his gaze had dropped lower and lower until he had been staring at nothing but his wooden floor. There was a weird something like an ache in his chest, feeling like a fountain rooted deep within his soul bubbling to life for the first time.

"Marks only show if they're temporary," she explained gently. "I wanted to do, well, _this_ —" she let go of his hand to gesture at the marks on her limbs— "because I thought it might mean more to you if you were to find out instead of just have me tell you. I'm sorry if I overwhelmed you with the suddenness."

The sun had finished setting by the time she had finished speaking, and, for a spell, all was silent between the two teenagers.

It wasn't a surprise when Yaoyorozu was the first to speak again. After all, she was better with words than he, and considering she knew about the two of them for months by that point, she had likely spared many a thought to what she would say when all this happened. Yet her words still caught him off guard.

"I love you, you know."

No, he hadn't known.

Shoto was still processing what she said when she began leaning in. He tensed; he wasn't sure what to do with his teeth if things were going where he thought they were going. Luckily, it was but a simple embrace (that kicked his adrenaline production into overdrive), but the closeness of it made the effect about the same. He fell at ease.

He didn't get _why_ exactly, but he did. That was nice.

He awkwardly wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close. So they were soulmates, huh? This didn't seem bad at all. Yaoyorozu was nice and pretty and smart and kickass and gave hella nice hugs. He breathed in her pleasant scent and let the world fade away.

"Yeah," he said, and it was weird, but he was able to mean it. Somehow, he really _did_ know. Shoto let out a long, soft breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in. With it, a whole slew of unfamiliar feelings came to him, feelings that only just now could he put a name to.

An impulse came to him at that moment. It made him twitchy, but would he dare? He hadn't a clue what to do with his teeth, after all. But she was close, and he was bad at holding things in, so without a second thought, Shoto pressed his lips against Momo's smooth, cool cheek.

It lasted but a few seconds, but it was enough to convey his response and more.

"I love you, too," he said when it was over, swallowing a lump in his throat, "you know."

Momo pulled away. She studied him for all of a moment, then leaned in and kissed his scar. It lasted no longer than when he had kissed her cheek, yet when it was over, he found himself wishing it hadn't been so short.

When she pulled away, there were tears forming in her eyes. She took his hand and that long-forgotten pen, and while drawing on his palm, she said, "Yeah. I know."

* * *

 ** _Author's Note:_** _and then they did_ not _fuck because they are responsible people._ _i meant to get this out on the tenth. and then i meant to get this out on monday, but i wasn't really happy with that draft, so i did the unthinkable: i edited and wrote a second draft, which is this. which i am much happier with because the first draft had some Bad Lines._

 _anyway i think scar kissing should be a trope in this fandom. i just think that would be cute as heck. i wonder if i only haven't seen it before because i haven't dug deep enough into this fandom's fic. hmm. anyway thank you for reading, feel free to leave a fave if you thought it was good enough, reviews are nice if that's your style, and as always, have a great day~_


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